STRUCTURAL PARAMETER APPROACH AND MULTICRITERIA OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES FOR COMPLEX CHEMICAL-ENGINEERING DESIGN

Complexity in chemical engineering design arises due to several reason s, e. g. heterogeneity of systems, multicomponent streams or complexit y of performance measures for the system. This fact often leads to sit uations where multicriteria decision techniques are necessary or at le ast usefull. The authors demonstrate on an industrial example (design of a hydrocracking plant) how structural parameter approach in combina tion with multicriteria decision techniques can be applied to solve su ch problems and to perform a system analysis. The example makes obviou s, how much more information can be obtained about performance of the system when multicriteria optimization rather than single criterion op timization is applied and how practical problems strongly demand for m ulticriteria techniques. To support the engineer during the design pro cess a decision support system including an object oriented modelling tool, structural parameter optimization and multicriteria decision tec hniques has been developed at the BTU Cottbus. Structure and included functions of the tool are described and possible applications are outl ined.